Bagenalstown

A town with two names that do not translate each other. Walter Bagenal laid it out on the Barrow in the 18th century and meant to build a second Versailles, which is why it was to be called New Versailles; the road went elsewhere and the plan died with it. Muine Bheag is the official name, and almost everyone says Bagenalstown.

• Browneshill dolmen · A capstone of some 100 tonnes, the heaviest in Europe, raised by farmers without wheels or metal. Nobody is sure how.
• St Mullin’s · Moling founded this in the early 7th century and is said to have dug the mill race himself. The Book of Mulling, written here in the 8th century, carries the earliest known plan of an Irish monastery — four crosses inside the wall and eight outside.
• Dunmore Cave · Where the annals say Vikings massacred a thousand people in 928. Bones of women and children were found inside in 1973 — and a Viking silver hoard in 1999.
• Kilkenny — the burning of Petronilla · Bishop Ledrede accused the moneylender Alice Kyteler of feeding a demon and killing four husbands. Kyteler slipped away. Her maid Petronilla de Meath, tortured into confessing, was flogged and burned on 3 November 1324 — the first such burning in Ireland, and it fell on the servant.
• St Mullin’s — the death of Mad Sweeney · Cursed by Rónán to wander as a bird-man and to die by a spear, Suibhne ends here in Moling’s care, drinking milk from a hollow in cow dung. Moling’s herdsman, believing a rumour about him, put the spear in — and the curse was complete.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.